I’m really looking forward to our Beer Foam webinar with Charlie Bamforth on Friday, March 24 at 3:00 PM MT (5 PM ET). What’s your biggest challenge with brewing beer with a beautiful head of foam?
Registration: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/zymurgy-live/beer-foam-science/
I am truly challenged when it comes to carbonating kegs. I recognize that’s not related to ingredients that lead to quality beer foam but kegging tricks for homebrewers would be great to know.
i dont have a particular question and ive heard a lot of it before im sure but would still listen to hours worth of this lol
Decades ago I learned that bottle conditioning with corn sugar (3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups of water, boiled for 10-15 minutes) would give me tighter bubbles in my finished product versus 1.25 cups of dried malt extract. Not sure if there is any truth to this, but I have used sugar ever since.
I actually tested that many years ago, along with other methods of carbonation. What I found was that the ferments and goes into solution faster than DME. If you wait long enough, they were the same.
Will the information from this be available after the event? I can’t really say what my question would be because my head formation and stability is all over the place. I sometimes get a good, thick head and other times it lasts for a very short time. I do not spund but I DID try it a few times and the head was very different. My brewing and my equipment is simple so I probably shouldn’t complain about a lack of foam. But it would be cool to see this material at some point.
I believe all these Zymurgy Live events will be free to AHA members soon after the event takes place.
Let me throw this out there. I understand bottle conditioning to an extent although I don’t bottle my beer. I force carbonate. Can you “bottle” ferment a keg?
Yes you can add sugar and let it carbonate. It takes less sugar as there is proportionally less head space in the keg.
Google priming home we brew in a keg to find the amount of sugar.
Also, on the topic of corn sugar vs. DME for carbing… I had always heard that corn sugar produced “big bubbles” and that DME produced a tighter and creamier head which led to better head formation and stability. I don’t think I ever used DME to prime bottles so I can’t comment on it but it sounds like the opposite of what was posted above.
As I have said many times before, I have tested this. Sugar carbs more quickly. You get smaller bubbles from DME because it takes longer to ferment and go into solution. Given enough time, they’re identical.
The main reason I carbonate using bottled CO2 is because it saves time.
I closed xfer into a keg then cold crash. I cold crash under CO2 pressure because I don’t want it pulling ambient air past the keg seals as it cools. As a result, this carbonates the beer and cools it in one step.
To carbonate using priming sugar (DME, table, honey, etc, etc) the keg would have to sit at room temp then cool to serving temp. That would add a sequential step that I currently perform simultaneously.
@Poptop: my concern with foam creation and retention are the seemingly random variables involved. One beer will have great carbonation and shaving cream foam and then the next beer doesn’t carbonate. Weird.
I feel like bottling beer with corn sugar (or anything) brings a nostalgic memory back to all of us. We were new brewers and maybe unsure of how everything worked but one day we grabbed some of those bottles and put them in the fridge and later popped the top and heard that KKSSHH! and thought “I made beer!”. :D It makes me want to bottle some beer and I’ve said that many times but… I tossed all my bottles so that’s enough of that fantasy. 
Here is a little question, but possibly worth asking:
Is beer foam negatively impacted by skimming of hot break in the early boil and/or filtering cold break in the chilling process?
According to what I learned many years ago, yes it is. May or may not still be true in light of later research.
That would make sense, but perhaps it is all a matter of degree? And so many sing the praises of clear wort transferred from the boil kettle…
Will Wrexham FC get promoted next season?
Yes, that’s true. Experience is a great teacher, though.
FWIW
I used to skim off hot break, now I let it disappear on its own.
I do beat it back with a spoon if it tries to get out of the kettle.
Cheers
I love skimming. It gives me something to do during the boil. 
Can’t say that it hurts foam retention because I’ve always skimmed. But…I will admit that sometimes I get great foam, foam retention and beautiful lacing down the glass. Sometimes not so much. I’ve always chalked that up to grain bill however. An example of great foam would be my Stout with lots of Flaked Barley and some Wheat Malt. My Porter, which has neither, does not. Is that the reason? I can’t say for sure but it is an easy place to point the finger.